Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion
...

Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion section of the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass. As such, our focus starts there and spreads to include Massachusetts, the nation and the world. Since successful blogs create communities of readers and writers, we hope the \x34& Co.\x34 will also come to include you.

My column today has my thoughts about Obama’s alleged “scandal trifecta” as of Friday morning, when I wrote it. My bottom line was “not so fast.” Big time scandals in presidential second terms grow into significance over a period of months, not days — and some fall apart and are quickly forgotten when the emerging facts don’t match up with either side’s highest hope or darkest fears. So we’ll see.

As I mentioned in an earlier comment,

I find it ironic that two post-Watergate laws, intended to protect the IRS and the DoJ from the kind of political interference wielded by Nixon, who used both agencies to go after his enemies, may insulate Obama from accountability. One report I saw said everyone involved in this business, with one single exception, was under Civil Service – an earlier reform designed to keep politics out of the IRS.

It’s possible, as most people assume, that there’s a phone call or e-mail tying these actions to Obama’s inner circle. Produce it and you have a case. Interview people. Ask them what happened; who made decisions, who informed whom. The investigation so far, waged by the IRS Inspector General, makes it look like a bureaucratic snafu. Today’s NYT reporting makes it sound like an episode out of “The Office”: